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Show I "God Save Ireland." While the soft, sweet old Irish melodies melo-dies made popular by Moore are widely known, there is an intereing if sad 1 tory connected with the writing of I Ireland's national anthem, "God Save Ireland," which will doubtless interest inter-est many of our readers and refresh the memory of others who remember: the days of the Fenians. Early one morning in September, 1867, the police on duty in Oak street. Manchester. England, after a desperate struggle, accosted as suspicious sus-picious characters two broad-shouldered, muscular men who proved to be heavily armed, and at the hearing a few hours later, were about to be sentenced by the magistrate to a few days' imprisonment under the vagrancy va-grancy act, when a detective recognized recog-nized them as Colonel Thomas J. Kel-ley Kel-ley and Captain Deasey, prominent Fenians for whose capture the government gov-ernment forces had been bending every effort since the remarkably clever rescue of James Stephens from Richmond Rich-mond jail. Dublin. Their arrest caused great satisfaction in England, and after a preliminary hearing a few days later they were remanded to the county coun-ty jail to await trial on the charge of "treason-felony," a crime then newly invented by the English government enabling it to condemn Irishmen to f death for political reasons. They were ! immediately handcuffed and placed in locked cells in the ordinary prison van ior tne journey across the city, with a I. ' . i :, ;w ... . dozen policemen as guards eight with the van and four in a cab. Passing the Hyde road railway arch, in a thinly thin-ly populated section, as if by magic a score of men appeared, many carrying pistols, and the police fled without a struggle, leaving the rescuers free to break down the door. In firing through the lock, a shot lodged in the heart of Police Sergeant Brett, who was inside the van, and his death two hours later was the only fatality of this daring rescue, res-cue, which shook England to its foundationsa foun-dationsa little band of Fenians in broad daylight rescuing fellow conspirators conspir-ators in the midst of an English city, and safely escaping the mob and police. po-lice. Ten minutes after their flight the police returned, reinforced by a mob, and only three of the band, who sacrificed sacri-ficed themselk-es to cover their comrades' com-rades' retreat, were captured and roughly handled. In response to the howl of the British Brit-ish press for vengeance, an all night raid on the Irish quarters In Manchester Manches-ter resulted in ever sixty men being summarily arrested and sentenced to short terms on various pretexts, and five were remanded to stand trial for the "murder" of Brett William P. Allen, Al-len, a native of Tipperary; Michael O'Brien, a native of Cork, and Lieutenant Lieuten-ant in the Union army during the civil war; Michael Larkin, a native of King's county: Edward O'Meagher Condon, a citizen of Ohio, also a civil war vet- eran, and Thomas Maguire of the Royal Marines. During the trial, which was a lowers of the principles for which was arranged long beforehand, the bearing and courage displayed by the accused men showed them worthy fol-fowers fol-fowers of the principles for .which many others had gladly died. Responding Respond-ing to the formal questions as to why sentence of death should. not be passed, Condon tersely expressed their sentiments senti-ments when he said, "We are not afraid to die for our cause and our country, we have done nothing to regret, and go to the scaffold saying, God Save Ireland!" Ire-land!" Their defiant cry echoing through the court house was taken up by their relatives and friends. Condon was soon pardoned because he was an American, Maguire was released re-leased on a petition signed by forty English journalists,, who had attended the trial and protested against the evidence, evi-dence, though it was the same as that which convicted the others. To the last moment it was the general belief that the death sentence would not be carried car-ried out, and on the morning of Nov. 23 the people of Ireland, and lovers of liberty throughout the world, were horror hor-ror stricken to receive the news that Allen, Larkin and O'Brien had been hanged at 8 o'clock. True Irishmen in life, they had gone unflinchingly to an early grave with a last dying prayer of "God Save Ireland," and around their tragic death T. D. Sullivan wrote what is now the national anthem of their native land, even as Francis Scott Keyes wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" Ban-ner" from the inspiration of a night in prison on an English man-of-war. It was but fitting that as the Irish-American Irish-American survivors of the civil war figured largely in the Fenian movement, Sullivan should set his words to the air of an American war song. |